Time for another look at a regional jail

Thursday

Nov 10, 2011 at 2:00 AM

With Democrats firmly in charge of the Sullivan County Legislature after this week's elections, they can return to the single most costly and thorny issue they have before them, figuring out a way to pay for a new jail.

With Democrats firmly in charge of the Sullivan County Legislature after this week's elections, they can return to the single most costly and thorny issue they have before them, figuring out a way to pay for a new jail.

The pressure is on the county and the party that leads it for several reasons. Three suicides in the past year have raised legitimate concerns that the century-old facility is not equipped to offer the security it must for inmates and employees. There have been 11 inmate suicides in New York this year, so the three in Sullivan constitute a crisis that cannot be ignored.

Yet the county does not have the money no matter if the jail costs about $73 million, at the low estimate, or the more realistic figure of $80 million that the sheriff came up with. And if the county cannot afford to handle this now, it will only get worse as years go by.

Costs will go up and nobody expects the county economy to do much more than keep pace with increases, if it can do that. Even the proponents of building casinos know that their promises of greater county revenue would not show up for many years.

There is an alternative, one that has been raised and dismissed for a while. It involves a regional approach to incarceration, the construction of whatever minimal facility would be needed by law enforcement in the county while Sullivan takes advantage of empty cells in nearby jails and pays daily fees.

Such an idea was gaining traction a few years ago when two respected local organizations — the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach at SUNY New Paltz and Mid-Hudson Pattern for Progress — began pressing for more research into regional cooperation. The state, which would have to approve such an approach, has never liked the idea. At one point or another people in Albany made it clear that counties would have to continue to provide and pay for these facilities with no exceptions.

Now, it's worth another try. A lot has changed in the past few years, much of it reflected in new approaches from Albany. Gov. Cuomo has scrapped many an old approach to state funding, whether that money was for education or economic development, and had embraced many new ways of thinking that promise greater efficiency. His administration is devoted to bridging the artificial boundaries that too often pitted county against county, city against city, and replacing them with a regional approach.

So, what once was dismissed without much explanation or thought might now be a welcome chance for a state looking to take this more practical approach. Sullivan cannot afford a new jail and does not really need one in the traditional full-service sense. Empty cells in other counties offer a chance for those jails to make a bit of money, especially at a time when the state is closing prisons and other facilities as the number of inmates decreases.

It made sense before even if nobody in charge would listen. It's time for the Democrats in charge of the Sullivan County Legislature to try again.